Do you feel lucky? An Anne Arundel County man who stood in line behind a $1,000 Maryland Lottery winner certainly did.

While waiting to buy his instant tickets at the Herald Harbor Inn and Mini Market in Crownsville, the 64-year-old overheard the $1,000 winner. Our loyal Lottery player had just won $5 on a Get Lucky scratch-off and decided to keep playing until he won big money, too. After three days of visiting the retailer, the Crownsville resident’s persistence paid off with a $50,000 top prize on the Get Lucky scratch-off.

“This was definitely a blessing,” he said. In fact, the win was an even bigger blessing than he initially thought. The construction worker thought he held a $50 winning ticket until a friend took a close look. He shared news of his good fortune with a few friends and family members and then finished off the weekend with his routine of watching Sunday night football on the couch. He hid the winning ticket under his hat for a few days until he arrived at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore to claim his prize.

Asked what he plans to do with the $50,000, the lucky man said, “I don’t know what it is about me, I’ve just always enjoyed helping people.” He plans to share some of his prize with a few friends and buy more gifts this holiday season. For selling the lucky ticket, the retailer at 400 Herald Harbor Road in Crownsville will receive a $500 bonus from the Maryland Lottery.

An Anne Arundel County woman who took a shot at winning the $414 million Mega Millions jackpot missed the mark but happily became Maryland’s newest millionaire.

The Millersville resident endured an emotional roller-coaster ride after hearing that a winning jackpot ticket and a $1 million second-tier ticket were sold in Maryland for the March 18 drawing.

“I heard the next day that the store where I’d gotten my ticket had sold a big winner,” said the 58-year-old mother of three. “When my husband and I checked the numbers on mdlottery.com the next night, we were stunned. We kept handing the ticket back and forth, telling each other to check it again. We knew what we were seeing could not be right!”

Their eyes were not fooling them, however. By playing a combination of family birthdays, the county employee fell just one number short of hitting the jackpot while nabbing a $1 million win.

The lucky couple didn’t sleep a wink that night. Excited over their good fortune, they began planning for the impact the Mega Millions win would have on their lives. “We waited a week or so to talk to some people we trust,” she said, “to figure out exactly how we were going to handle the luck that had come our way.”

A fan of the Powerball and Mega Millions jackpot games, our happy winner kept telling her husband, year after year, that this was their year for a big win. She kept the faith even when each year passed without a jackpot prize. “Our year finally came,” she said. Lottery luck found her at Waterbury Liquors at 1021 Generals Highway in Crownsville.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience is about to take place for some extremely lucky Marylanders. Ten winners were selected through the Lottery’s Ravens Cash Fantasy contest on mdlottery.com/ravens to accompany the Baltimore Ravens to their December 4 game vs. the Cleveland Browns. Each winner will receive a trip-for-two which includes: flying to Cleveland on the team plane with the Ravens; a one-night hotel stay at the team hotel; tickets to the Ravens vs. Browns game; and $500 spending money. The winners, who hail from all over the state, are:

Chesapeake City: Theresa Caleb

Conowingo: Otis McGlothlin III

Crownsville: Andrew Nowlin

Forest Hill: Fred Creutzer, IV

Frederick: Bruce Bowers

Glen Burnie: Christie Robinson

Owings Mills: Demetrius Stewart

Pasadena: John Tracey Jr.

Pasadena: Michael Drapalski

Windsor Mill: Annie Mitten

Ravens Cash Fantasy players are encouraged to continue registering their EXTRA YARDS in the ticket’s Internet promotion. Prizes such as $1 million cash, “season tickets for life” (20 years), season tickets for 2012, cheerleader calendar trip, and autographed merchandise remain to be won. Visit mdlottery.com/ravens for details on prizes, drawing dates and more.

An Anne Arundel County man is happy he returned to the same store where he purchased Lottery tickets earlier this week. When he walked in, the 60-year-old was told by a store employee that his store sold a winning $250,000 Mega Millions ticket from Tuesday night’s drawing. The clerk told him that he should check his tickets.

The winner went home and immediately told his wife the news. His wife replied, “I bought some things at the store and I hope you won enough to pay for the items I bought.” Then, they went to the Lottery’s website at mdlottery.com to look up the winning numbers. The couple, who have been married for over 30 years, realized they won but still didn’t know how much. They checked out the prize table online and realized the ticket was worth $250,000. “I thought it was much lower,” the winner said. “It was a big surprise.”

The winner, who doesn’t have any plans for his prize right now, said he has no intention of telling anyone. The winning ticket was sold at Bay Bridge Liquor Mart, located at 1598-G Whitehall Road in Annapolis. To win the second-tier prize, players must match all five white balls, only missing the Mega Ball. There was no jackpot winner Tuesday, making Friday night’s drawing worth $75 million.

A cross-country phone call brought a Crownsville woman to the Lottery’s claim center yesterday to pick-up a prize that Lottery officials were beginning to fear would go unclaimed. Gloria Cunningham of Crownsville, doing the legwork for her husband in Seattle on a business trip, erased those concerns with a small slip of paper – a Pick 3 bonus coupon – good for $50,000.

Gloria’s husband plays Lottery games frequently, she explained, and wins frequently. In fact, he plays so often that a Lottery retailer with whom he’s formed a friendship called him to alert him that his shop had sold a big winner three weeks earlier that had not yet been claimed. That thoughtful gesture spurred the call home. According to Gloria, “My husband calls me all the time when he’s away. It’s usually unimportant, everyday things – nothing like this.”

He asked that she go through his accumulated bonus coupons to check for a match. It wasn’t long before Gloria found it. There was yelling on both ends of the line, 3,000 miles apart. There will be another celebration when the family is reunited and you can bet they’ll include the folks from Luckys Suprette, 1101 Odenton Rd. in Odenton.

From May 17th though June 20th, players who purchased Pick 3 tickets randomly received bonus coupons. If the coupon’s last two digits match the last two digits of that evening’s Pick 3, the player won $100. If they didn’t match, the coupon number was automatically entered into a weekly drawing. For the first four weeks of the promotion, weekly prizes ranged from $10,000 to $50,000. During the final week of the promotion, prizes ranged from $50,000 to $250,000.

Prizes remain unclaimed from this promotion. Winning coupon numbers can be found by clicking here. Winners have 60 days from the draw date on the coupon to claim their prizes. Players must present their coupons at the time of claiming.

Recently retired and winding down, John Obradovic was ready to start the next chapter of his life. Last Friday, at the Lottery Claim Center, his plans for that next chapter suddenly changed when he handed in a $4.45 million winning Multi-Match ticket.

The Severna Park resident matched all of Thursday night’s Multi-Match numbers to become Maryland’s newest millionaire. The winner, who sold automotive equipment for 45 years, was watching TV Friday morning when the winning numbers were shown. He quickly wrote the numbers down and continued on with his everyday routine. At some point after breakfast, he compared his tickets to his scribbled numbers. First line – nothing. Second line – nothing. Third line – wait a minute.

“I ran to the computer to check the winning numbers online to be sure,” John told officials. “Everything matched. I sat there not knowing what to do.” With a calmness that surprised even him, he stuck to the schedule he had for the day, betraying not the slightest hint of excitement to anyone he encountered. It wasn’t until he was leaving Lottery Headquarters that his reserve slipped — the smile got wider and the happiness began breaking through. “Dreaming of winning big money had always been just that, until now,” said John. “I now have that extra ‘cushion’ we all hope for in our retirement years.”

Multi-Match luck struck John at Waterbury Liquors at 1021 Generals Hwy. in Crownsville.

There was one top-tier winning ticket sold from last night’s Multi-Match drawing, ending the months-long jackpot-roll that grew to the second-largest in Multi-Match history. The jackpot reached $4.45 million dollars, with a cash option of $2.8 million. The winner, yet to be identified, purchased the ticket at Waterbury Liquors, located at 1021 Generals Hwy in Crownsville.

As suggested by its name, there are multiple ways to win with Multi-Match. Players may win by matching 3, 4 or 5 numbers on any one line, or by matching 5 to 18 numbers on all three lines combined. To win the jackpot, players must match all six numbers on one line. The Multi-Match jackpot starts at $500,000 and rises every time the large prize isn’t won.

Back in September 2009, two Dundalk co-workers claimed a $4.8 million Multi-Match jackpot, the largest since the game’s inception. Multi-Match drawings can be seen on WBAL-TV Channel 11 on Mondays and Thursdays at 11:22 pm.